Poll: Water: Bottled or Tap?

I drilnk bottled, but none of that expensive crap. A lot of the groceries around here have Culligan or similar water which you can dump in gallon jugs and buy for $0.49/gallon (or $0.29 if you reuse your jug). And it tastes good.

I still usually use tap water for coffee and tea, but more and more often, I've been using "jugged" water, since our tap water tastes like butt.

I'm a little scared to ask this.. but... how do you know what butt tastes like?

I'm a little bit scared to ask this.. but... how do you not know what butt tastes like?�
*grin*

i'm with josh on that one.� i'm rather fond of filling the gallon container at dirt cheap prices.� i avoid tap water like the plague; as a singer, there's enough stuff in there to make the soothing properties of water completely counterproductive...

�-= george =-

Not a faucet filter, but rather a reverse osmosis purifier coupled with the water filtration and softener we have. Together it produces about as pure of water you can get, no particulates or chemicals.

I love the system (Ecowater), because it saves tons of money on soap products (since it softens the water) and also protects the interior plumbing of the house from buildups. I used to go through one bottle of shampoo about every 1.5 to 2 months, now I go through one bottle of shampoo about every 5 months.

Only problem is I can't drink from a water fountain any more, cuz I can taste all the chemicals and particulates.

Dude!� Reverse osmosis is the way to go.� I'll only drink�reverse osmosis,�or bottled water if I'm somewhere other than at home.

Actually most bottled water (Osarka, Aquafina, etc) is reverse osmosis purified water.

Hmm...maybe not where I live.� All I can think of is Dasani, but it's disgusting.� I don't trust water made by a cola company.� And you can see this odd-looking mist coming out of the bottle when you open it.� That's just creepy.

My ex-boss really said this.

Someone put lye in bottles of Poland Spring water.

I said, "I sometimes drink that."

She said, "I never drink the cheap bottled waters, they taste like water."

Maybe we should have a new thread of stupidest things ever.

haha...tastes like water. hahaha

gets out the chlorine taste.

Lemon is a good way to do that with water from most restaurants.

I love my Brita filter.

My mother-in-law has a Culligan filter affixed to the tap. That works pretty well.

Our water here doesn't taste bad, but I'm afraid of what's lurking in it. Hence the Brita.

And I never drink unbottled water when travelling. I've gotten sick too many times.

leaving it out for 24 hours is a good way to get rid of chlorine, too. assuming that you don't mind waiting, that is... :)

I know it's super weird but I really don't like water...I think there is something wrong with me...all I drink is juice...

I'm not a big fan of it either. Before I started dieting a couple of years ago I barely ever drank it but now I make myself have it with meals to cut down on the sugar I'm ingesting. I also only really like water if it's ice cold.

I drink bottled at work, and filtered tap at home. Our tap water here isn't bad, actually, but I still like having the filter. In the house I grew up in we had well water and it tasted SO assy with all these metals and minerals and crap in it. It made me so sick. So it was Brita or nothing in those years. :)

I generally agree.� I especially don't care for water with food.� I drink mostly juice, and I'm sure that's not good for me.� I'll usually drink from water fountains when I'm in a public place, and I'll use the tap when I'm thirsty enough to knuckle down and just drink water.� I generally won't buy bottled water; I don't like paying for it, and I don't think it tastes that much better.

here, I drink tap water, it's pretty good. besides most of the water you can buy here is mineral water, and it's usually carbonated, and sometimes, even if it says it's not carbonated, it is.

last year, I drank brita water, because my roomates had a big ole filter-jug.

at my parents I drink bottled water because they buy the cheap stuff that comes in gallon jugs, only they have a massive one that takes up a big chunk of the fridge.

My hometown water is ranked 3rd in the US...� it's great

There's a big difference between tap water from a well and tap water from a city system. I despise city water, but I love that good ol' country hard well water.

hard well water?� What is that?

Well water tends to have a lot of minerals and stuff dissolved in it. At least where I come from. You have to run it through a water softener to make it better. It just makes the water taste different. If you grew up with it, you typically love it.

The one thing that truly sucks about hard water is trying to take showers. Rinsing off is hopelessly slow.

Is it just me, or does softened water taste salty?� Not ocean salty, but still.

I supposed a sink-mounted softener would be OK, but bathing in soft water is nasty.� The film... *ick*

It's not just you.
My granparents had a water softner in their house, and the water tasted more like chemicals than anything I've ever had before or since.

I tend to drink city water, although in Bowling Green I switched to Brita once the water started to come out a thick milky-white....

Grew up on well water, now on city water.

well water, you fill your glass, and often you wait about 5-10 seconds for it to stop fizzing before you drink it, even after the softener. a lot tastier if you run it though the filter. :)

-- Pauley

Most areas of the midwest have a huge layer of limestone between the surface and the water table.� The well water filters through the stone, increaseing the "hardness".

Our water is hard enough that our aquarium was cloudy.� It's taken seven softener treatments to clarify it, and there's still about 7 times as much particulate matter than is considered 'safe.'� Poor fishes. :-(

One town near my childhood home has a massive amount of sulfur in the water.� We always said that you could tell who showered most recently, because they smelled the worst.� Everyone used the grocery Culligan dispensers.

Then we moved to 'The Limestone Capital of the World'... guess what the water was like.� Bloomington uses chlorine to kill algae blooms in the source lake, then chlorinates again to purify.� Pur is our friend.

A friend of mine lives on a farm and the well-water they have has literally been declarede "Unfit for human consumption". They use bottled water for everything, but still need to shower in the crap that comes from their well. It smells like pee. I know most wells are ok, but there is just something horribly wrong with theirs.

I usually drink Brita water and I don't know anybody here in Ontario who still drinks straight tap water. (probably because of Walkerton). I spent 5 weeks in northern Quebec this summer and my first day there, I asked my host mother for a glass of water and she just filled a glass from the tap and I was like "What are you doing???!!!!" I had never really realized how much i depend on bottled stuff.

It all depends on you having a decent well and water source, though. :) Our well in NW CT tasted like ASS. :)

Am I the only one here that didn't know what hard well water was?� Jebus..� *blush*

Amen.

Well water is the best!
I grew up on a well.. and my parents are still in the same house.

I looooove the water there.
It's only been in the past 5 or 10 years that it's started to become acidic.. (they live on a mountain .. and the acid rain has started to take its toll) so now they have to treat it a little bit because of that... but it still tastes great.

:)

It seems like I'm doing a lot of water posts. *shrug*

Bloomington has enough ongoing water projects that bottled or filtered is almost required.� We've had sediment (white, brown, red, and black) from water main breaks several times this year.

Moving this on to the kitties in the topic, our water has had giardia in the past.� The result is an extremely unhappy kitty.� Figures it'd affect the fat, athsmatic one. :-(� How many pills can one cat take?

When i lived in bowling green i drank only bottled water, because BG's water, much like josh's water, tasted like butt. now that i'm back in toledo, i drink the tap water. much cheaper. and it tastes much better.

While I'm at work, I drink bottled water from the water cooler.� I pretty much am drinking water throughout the day.� I have�a one liter bottle that I reuse and I typically go through 4-5 litres of water a day at work (this of course brings about lots of trips to the bathroom).� While at home, I drink good ol' New York City tap water, but I boil it first.� Sometimes it's a bit minerally, but I can deal with it.�

I pretty much tote around a�bottle of life's nectar wherever I go, and when I run out, typically run into a store and buy bottled..usually Poland Spring, sometimes I splurge and go for Volvic, cause that's good yummy water filled with sweet-tasting minerals.� Evian tastes too metallic for my tastes.� And thank you all for confirming that not all water tastes the same, as my friend�just does not believe me.�

...is that it always tastes slightly like plastic/sugary. It's not something where I won't drink it, but I tend to think that brita or even tap water tastes more natural than any of the bottled brands. Well, unless you get the same water as bottled out of the tap ;-)

for all of you who say you reuse plastic bottles (soda/water types, not nalgenes), have you seen the recent reports about how unhealthily contaminated they can get? i know it seems weird since you feel like you're only putting in water, but i'll tell ya--the reports made me love my nalgene more than i already did. wide-mouth nalgenes can be cleaned much more effectively than small-mouth disposable bottles. they also now sell these really cool (dishwasher safe!) inserts to stick in the wide mouth to make it smaller to drink from. no more getting a shower each time i drink from my nalgene.

just something to think about...

You're absolutely right about reusing bottles. The backwash that's left is full of bacteria (mostly from your own mouth). Washing it out with boiling water or very very hot tap water will cut down on most contamination.

I throw out plastic bottles after about a month.

most mineral water bottles you can't wash out with boiling water. they melt.

I run water for my fish tanks through a reverse osmosis and deionizer.� It removes more than 99% of the total dissolved solids from the water.�� Oh yeah.. I don't drink water, it's pepsi for me.�